Japan's "safety myth" about nuclear power now a dispelled fantasy

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Illustration by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll's 1872 "Through the Looking Glass."In an article entitled " ‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis," the New York Times reports that Japan's widespread embrace of nuclear power as "absolutely safe" didn't happen by accident -- it has been nurtured through vast public relations expenditures by the nuclear establishment in government and industry, most often deliberately targeted at children and young mothers. As a popular Japanese musician, Kazuyoshi Saito, has put it in a song that has gone viral on YouTube, “It was always a lie, it’s been exposed after all/It was really a lie that nuclear power is safe.” The song has become an anthem at growing Japanese anti-nuclear street protests.

One Japanese nuclear power plant, for example, created an elaborate pro-nuclear "Alice in Wonderland" display in its "P.R. building," apparently oblivious to the fact that the U.S. anti-nuclear power movement had already laid claim to the theme. Inspired by John Gofman's "Alice in Nuclear Blunderland" essay in his classic 1979 book of political cartoons Irrevy: An Irreverant, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power, in 2006 Don't Waste Michigan scripted an "Alas, in Atomic Blunderland" street theater skit, complete with colorful costumes, to satirize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rubberstamp of the 20 year license extension at the risky Palisades reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Humpty Dumpty, portrayed by Michael Keegan of the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, provided satirical commentary on such "Nukespeak" as calling nuclear meltdowns "energetic excursions," hydrogen explosions "gaseous ignition events," and high-level radioactive waste "an untapped energy resource." (see image at left) Similarly, atomic watchdogs in South Carolina donned Alice in Wonderland costumes and crashed the very first "Tea Party" in 2009, pointing out the Mad Hatter irony of supposedly fiscally conservative "Tea Party" activists and political leaders remaining neutral, or worse, about vast nuclear power subsidization at taxpayer and ratepayer expense.